the thing about art is that it was always supposed to be about us, about the human-ness of us, the impossible and beautiful reality that we (for centuries) have stood still, transfixed by music. that we can close our eyes and cry about the same book passage; the events of which aren't real and never happened. theatre in shakespeare's time was as real as it is now; we all laugh at the same cue (pursued by bear), separated hundreds of years apart.

three years ago my housemates were jamming outdoors, just messing around with their instruments, mostly just making noise. our neighbors - shy, cautious, a little sheepish - sat down and started playing. i don't really know how it happened; i was somehow in charge of dancing, barefoot and laughing - but i looked up, and our yard was full of people. kids stacked on the shoulders of parents. old couples holding hands. someone had brought sidewalk chalk; our front walk became a riot of color. someone ran in with a flute and played the most astounding solo i've ever heard in my life, upright and wiggling, skipping as she did so. she only paused because the violin player was kicking his heels up and she was laughing too hard to continue.

two weeks ago my friend and i met in the basement of her apartment complex so she could work out a piece of choreography. we have a language barrier - i'm not as good at ASL as i'd like to be (i'm still learning!) so we communicate mostly through the notes app and this strange secret language of dancers - we have the same movement vocabulary. the two of us cracking jokes at each other, giggling. there were kids in the basement too, who had been playing soccer until we took up the far corner of the room. one by one they made their slow way over like feral cats - they laid down, belly-flat against the floor, just watching. my friend and i were not in tutus - we were in slouchy shirts and leggings and socks. nothing fancy. but when i asked the kids would you like to dance too? they were immediately on their feet and spinning. i love when people dance with abandon, the wild and leggy fervor of childhood. i think it is gorgeous.

their adults showed up eventually, and a few of them said hey, let's not bother the nice ladies. but they weren't bothering us, they were just having fun - so. a few of the adults started dancing awkwardly along, and then most of the adults. someone brought down a better sound system. someone opened a watermelon and started handing out slices. it was 8 PM on a tuesday and nothing about that day was particularly special; we might as well party.

one time i hosted a free "paint along party" and about 20 adults worked quietly while i taught them how to paint nessie. one time i taught community dance classes and so many people showed up we had to move the whole thing outside. we used chairs and coatracks to balance. one time i showed up to a random band playing in a random location, and the whole thing got packed so quickly we had to open every door and window in the place.

i don't think i can tell you how much people want to be making art and engaging with art. they want to, desperately. so many people would be stunning artists, but they are lied to and told from a very young age that art only matters if it is planned, purposeful, beautiful. that if you have an idea, you need to be able to express it perfectly. this is not true. you don't get only 1 chance to communicate. you can spend a lifetime trying to display exactly 1 thing you can never quite language. you can just express the "!!??!!!"-ing-ness of being alive; that is something none of us really have a full grasp on creating. and even when we can't make what we want - god, it feels fucking good to try. and even just enjoying other artists - art inherently rewards the act of participating.

i wasn't raised wealthy. whenever i make a post about art, someone inevitably says something along the lines of well some of us aren't that lucky. i am not lucky; i am dedicated. i have a chronic condition, my hands are constantly in pain. i am not neurotypical, nor was i raised safe. i worked 5-7 jobs while some of these memories happened. i chose art because it mattered to me more than anything on this fucking planet - i would work 80 hours a week just so i could afford to write in 3 of them.

and i am still telling you - if you are called to make art, you are called to the part of you that is human. you do not have to be good at it. you do not have to have enormous amounts of privilege. you can just... give yourself permission. you can just say i'm going to make something now and then - go out and make it. raquel it won't be good though that is okay, i don't make good things every time either. besides. who decides what good even is?

you weren't called to make something because you wanted it to be good, you were called to make something because it is a basic instinct. you were taught to judge its worth and over-value perfection. you are doing something impossible. a god's ability: from nothing springs creation.

a few months ago i found a piece of sidewalk chalk and started drawing. within an hour i had somehow collected a small classroom of young children. their adults often brought their own chalk. i looked up and about fifteen families had joined me from around the block. we drew scrangly unicorns and messed up flowers and one girl asked me to draw charizard. i am not good at drawing. i basically drew an orb with wings. you would have thought i drew her the mona lisa. she dragged her mother over and pointed and said look! look what she drew for me and, in the moment, i admit i flinched (sorry, i don't -). but the mother just grinned at me. he's beautiful. and then she sat down and started drawing.

someone took a picture of it. it was in the local newspaper. the summary underneath said joyful and spontaneous artwork from local artists springs up in public gallery. in the picture, a little girl covered in chalk dust has her head thrown back, delighted. laughing.

day 200 of asking misha to put his hands around my neck and choke me lightly

u guys keep forgetting they are bitchy. the divorce is not gonna look like crowley trashing the bookshop or anything like that but it is gonna look like crowley reserving all the tables at the ritz for the day he knows aziraphale is going to be in town. aziraphale ordering angels to make it cloudy during an eclipse. crowley starting a bidding war over a prophecy book aziraphale wants. aziraphale undoing crowley’s miracle block on parking ticket officials. crowley ordering a cleaning service to the bookshop. aziraphale putting crowley’s apartament on mormon missionary’s lists. crowley and aziraphale separately bitching about the other to any human they coming into contact with and then being shocked when the human asks how long they had been with their ex. both of them religiously checking each other’s locations.

update to the Playing Undertale With Roommate Whose Only Social Media is Pinterest situation: we only just got to waterfall and so far it has been a fucking trip

they have No Idea the significance of Flowey yet. not even a hint. they thought the sans echo flower conversation was about echo flowers

during the papyrus date and especially when they got to his room they kept looking at me and saying "THIS is your man????" which they stopped asking after the date. they have read some of my fics. i do not think i am any less insane to them now

they gave papyrus a valley girl voice btw. mostly because i had to beg them not to give him a mickey mouse voice instead

they didn't fucking know what skeletor sounds like

bc i know The Efficient Ways to do Things and they don't they've been reminding me of a buncha details & lines of dialogue I don't actually have embedded in my memory. particularly "PAPYRUS IS HUNGRY, TOO! HUNGRY FOR JUSTICE!"

they got the "Can I speak to G..." phone call. i have never once gotten that in any of my playthroughs, probably because i don't usually go up to that area but still. ik its not REALLY rare but i have never actually seen it Organically before so it was crazy to ME

Dogsong is my morning alarm ok. so when it showed up in the game and they realized they recognized it on a subconscious level they looked physically pained

Undyne's first chase scene scared the shit out of them

this is a wierd question maybe but has a medical professional ever said anything at all about quadrobics?

i just know that in human pup safety courses they specifically dedicate a lot of time talking about wrist and hand injuries you can give yourself related to not playing properly and not using any wrist protection or support. MMA gloves are one of the most basic humanpup gears that they frequently stress is the Most important piece of gear you have because it's basically armor. and in humanpupplay, there is no running and jumping and parkour-type shit; youre just on the floor walking around or wrestling another dog. if its so easy to break your wrists doing that, imagine how easy it is to break your wrists with absolutely no protection whatsoever, running and jumping around?

(video from Gpup Alpha who is a humanpup educator AND doctor!)

iirc one of the entire points of the sport is to do it without protection to show off how adaptive or agile your body is. and honestly i think this is really terrible. this is a 1 way ticket to completely fucking up your wrists. again - if its easy to fuck up your wrists just by walking on your knuckles and knees, its even easier to do that when youre running and jumping and slamming your entire weight down onto your wrists without protection or support

i feel bad not having a real conclusion to this post. i want to say "go buy MMA gloves, go buy wrist support, go watch humanpup safety videos" but i am also not a medical professional and i have no idea what would work best here as protection against injury or longterm strain. maybe i'll say you should check in with a doctor before starting quadrobics and see what they recommend for wrist support because SOMETHING has to be better than forcing your entire body weight onto your hands and wrists this way (a fragile structure which has 8 bones btw!!)

be careful with your body. i dont care if you hate your body or do not identify with it. it is still a delicate machine that carries you through your life!!

it’s been four months since December 2022 and I’m still not over the fact that Reigen was apparently so haunted by guilt from that one time in S2E2 where he scolded Mob for eating too many french fries that it showed up in the super emotionally charged eyecatcher montage during the series finale.

I wonder if reigen will ever find the closure he needs to free himself from the poltergeist of regret that obviously follows him around as a result of this incident. the confession incident really had reigen re-evaluating everything from the past three years.

spillways really is THAT song for me. like the whole “fuck forgiveness let yourself be bitter and you’re allowed to feel that way AND it’s okay to be angry and even though you try to bury that shit deep inside of you and move on IT’S OKAY TO LET IT OUT and be PISSED” vibe of the song hits directly home. that shit really does just resonate so much with my trauma

Haven't flexed for the internet in a while.

also quite obsessed with karl being as detached from the story as he is. there's nothing that makes him have to be the detective that has to be involved, but he unknowingly dooms himself by agreeing to work with the KYAL cult. every other detective basically deals with elias head on except weissman, who only meets him right before he kills him. like he's right when he says "by my choices" because everything that leads him to being mixed up with the mannix cult is himself. it's the gambling debts and the choice to do the dirty work for an organisation he knows nothing about. he's the only one that doesn't encounter that body doing police work and it's specifically because he's told to cover it up. he gets himself into the mess and eventually fixes it but the fact that esther always dies in the doomed timelines and he's always too late even if he starts wanting to change things ("till this child. esther.") it just makes me very ill

honestly I think it’s kinda interesting how phil’s relationships with wilbur, tallulah, chayanne & tubbo are all reflecting back into his view of sunny tbh. like he has such complex delicate interwoven dynamics with all of them and it all gets thrown onto sunny, this poor kid who he loves in theory, but in practice is a stranger to him. 

like wilbur left tallulah in phil’s care and didn’t come back. even now way after he was initially supposed to, wilbur hasn’t returned (that one day aside). and phil, who had already taken on a big commitment watching tallulah, has been left permanently with two eggs in his sole care. and even though he loves tallulah and wil, and won’t want them out of his life, this is a stress for him. it’s a big undertaking for anyone, to care for two kids alone, but especially since tallulah required a lot of changes in his life.

for better or worse, in many ways phil sees chayanne as an extension of himself. they’re similar in a lot of ways, and often on the same page, and it means phil often struggles to catch up when chayanne’s emotions aren’t on the same page as him. we’ve seen this week, phil having such a hard time understanding the depth and breadth of chayanne’s grief. when he catches on, he usually does a good job empathising and talking it through, but when he doesn’t, he really doesn’t and it can be hard to watch. 

the same is NOT true for tallulah. he has, through hard work and practice, learnt how to identify her emotions. he had to. she needed it. she would have been miserable otherwise. she desperately needed asked for the emotional care and birthdays and consideration that chayanne would never ask for. and he’s good at it—tracking her moods, knowing what upsets her & what she cares about in a way that doesn’t come as naturally with chayanne (or sunny or tubbo or anyone else really expect maybe wilbur). but that took A LOT of time and effort, months of work, and I do think he’s a bit wary of the idea of having to do that again, even when it comes to people he loves like chayanne (or god forbid tubbo).

now tubbo is not wil. tubbo is not phil's son. but he’s still not dissimilar to wil in phil’s mind. whatever the backstory is, phil introduces tubbo to tallulah as an old friend of him and wil’s. he makes tubbo his kids’ godfather. he calls tubbo his boy. he looks out for him. but past those first few weeks, their relationship doesn’t progress. they mean a lot to each other bc of their pasts, but they don’t put any work into upkeeping their relationship and phil in particular doesn’t reflect at all on what how that changes their dynamic. and it does change it—this is clear in purgatory, with phil having zero trust in tubbo to protect chayanne and tallulah, and after, with tubbo endlessly poking at phil’s sore spots trying to illicit a reaction he’ll never receive. 

it's also clear in the way phil has no understanding of what’s going on with tubbo. if he’s struggling to grasp chay’s emotions, he’s not even touching what’s going on in tubbo’s head. tubbo’s death makes no sense to him. it’s sudden. it’s random. it’s illogical. it’s stupid. he wasn’t joking about having two lives? he still took a death bet with richas? he’s not come back? he can’t come back? he’s left phil with distraught kids for no reason with no warning. he doesn’t see the erratic suicidal behaviour, the unending depression, the desperation to be loved. he doesn’t want to see it. he doesn’t want something to be wrong with tubbo, but he also doesn’t even know how to see what’s wrong. he’s annoyed he’s having to deal with it and he desperately desperately wants to believe this is all happening for no reason.

bc at the forefront of phil’s mind is still his love for tubbo. of course, phil would drop everything to help tubbo (if he could recognize something was wrong). of course, he would care for sunny as his own. of course, he would make the same sacrifices he’s made for wil. and he assumes he’ll have to. he thought that sunny would now be under his care. that he’d have to figure out the logistics of a third egg to care for. with wilbur, phil was the only person who could ever have taken care of tallulah. the only person he trusted, the only person who knew tallulah enough. now this isn’t true for tubbo. it’s a genuinely illogical assumption for phil to make: three eggs would be a genuine burden on him; they've never spoken about it; there’s a long list of people who would tubbo expects for sunny before; and he doesn’t even know sunny well enough to name these people for her as comfort.

but still in the moment, alone with tubbo’s eggs and dealing with everything he left behind, phil can only think that the exact same thing that happened before will happen: he alone will be left to care for another scared hurt kid of someone he loves.

and here we come to sunny. a kid whose dad he loves. a kid whose dad he doesn’t understand. a kid whose dad is suddenly gone like his son is gone. a kid who would need him like his daughter needs him. a kid who his son needs to protect. a kid he cares for. a kid he can’t afford to care for, a kid he wasn’t expecting to care for, a kid he doesn’t know how to care for, a kid he would care for if he needed to, a kid he doesn’t know why he’s been left to care for. a kid who is somehow a reflection of all these people he loves but not someone he knows at all.

idk i think this tension comes out in the a lot of the comments phil makes of and to sunny. he doesn't know them well enough to distinguish them from his relationships with other people. and as long as no one challenges him on that, we'll continue to hear these misplaced comments from him, that come across so insensitively, even as he tries his best to genuinely help them and their dad.

OHH THIS MAN IS WAY TOO IMMACULATE I FEAR!!!!

he says i hate everyone except you and that is addictive and that is kind of romantic and beautiful because you're young and you're kind of a sarcastic asshole too and you don't like bad boys, per say, but you don't really like good ones either. and you like that you were the exception, it felt like winning.

except life is not a romance book, and he was kind of being honest. he doesn't learn to be nice to your friends. he only tolerates your family. you have to beg him to come with you to birthday parties, he complains the whole time. you want to go on a date but - people are often there, wherever you're going. he's just so angry. about everything, is the thing. in the romance book, doesn't he eventually soften? can't you teach him, through your own sense of whimsy and comfort?

at first - you know introverts often need smaller friend groups, and honestly, you're fine staying at home too. you like the small, tidy life you occupy. you're not going to punish him for his personality type.

except: he really does hate everyone but you. which means he doesn't get along with his therapist. which means he has no one to talk to except for you. which means you take care of him constantly, since he otherwise has no one. which means you sometimes have to apologize for him. which means he keeps you home from seeing your friends because he hates them. you're the single exception.

about a decade from this experience, you'll type into google: how to know if a relationship is codependent.

he wraps an arm around you. i hate everyone except you. these days, you're learning what he's actually confessing is i have very little practice being kind.

I think one aspect of Nie Mingjue that is critically overlooked in fandom is that he failed.

What I mean is that I think it's strongly implied that a significant part of Nie Mingjue's moral rigidity and his tendency to universally fall back on his principles instead of trying to see the unique context of a new situation is that he is strongly aware that at some point his sense of judgement will be greatly impaired due to the saber curse, and he hopes that a strong rule-based morality system that he sticks to at all times-- ignoring any specfic feelings or doubts that may arise-- will help mitigate the damage when that happens. If he's trained himself to ignore his instincts and stick to the rules, he can continue doing the right thing even after he emotionally can no longer tell what the right thing is!

And it fails! Miserably! He essentially tried to destroy his ancestral curse with Facts and Logic and it didn't work! And he doesn't even realize that it's no longer working because surprise surprise: the curse that severely affects your sense of judgement also ruins your ability to gauge whether you're still standing by those rules you made up for yourself.

And the system was flawed from the get-go, because there is no such thing as a set of moral rules that are so universally applicable you'll never have to make unclear decision in edge-cases or re-evalutate the rules themselves based on new information-- a thing this system won't let him do because What If That's The Curse Talking? (nmj is basically a walking version of the slippery slope fallacy. Any small change is bad because it will lead to eventual catastrophy)-- and also because facts unfortunately do in fact care about your feelings and your attempt to be objective and unclouded by your emotions is still going to be subjective and informed by your own views, which is why Nie Mingjue's moral code has a core tentant that says self-sacrifice is not only Good but Mandatory and wanting to live is Bad, actually.

But even if the rules had somehow been perfect it would still, in the end, have failed. Right as the moment Nie Mingjue made that whole fucking system for arrives, it becomes useless. It's honestly really dark and tragic and deeply fascinating because of that.

Any fix-it that includes Nie Mingjue recovering from late stage saber poisoning should include him being absolutely horrified. Not just in the generic "oh my god I'm so sorry I hurt you" way, but in the sense that the thing he has committed to to the utmost degree since he was a child failed completely and instantly without him even noticing. Dedicated most of his life to it and it didn't matter at all. That's gonna fuck with a guy's head.

lime lime lime lime lime (and his m34th weapon that can turn into many things)

Not to get personal but I think the reason princess tutu stuck with me for so long after watching it is like. As someone with low self esteem and abandonment issues seeing our hero hate who she is at her core only to make a friend who not only tolerated her “ugly” side but is so so deeply charmed by who she is under the mask that he wants to spend the rest of his life with her no strings attached? That’s the fucking DREAM

It’s the fantasy of having someone who loves you even when you’ve stopped being useful, when you can’t be funny or interesting or any of the traits you try to cultivate to make yourself more palatable to others. It’s the fantasy of having someone see to the core of you and not flinching, instead, coming away more endeared than before.

Princess Tutu is about hope. When Duck, our hero who brings hope to everyone, falls into despair, her best friend is there to bring hope back to her. And I think it says something that hope is the emotion the show leaves me with too. Hope for a better future. Hope that one day, like Duck, I’ll grow out of the ugly duckling phase and be able to embrace my true self.

What breaks me the most when I'm rewatching season one is every time Will goes to Hannibal for comfort and help, and it's like. please cut my chest open with your fucking mouth and rip my heart out with your claws cause fuck.